Anchors away

By ROBIN BAILEY

Steve Mair moved into management after chopping off his thumb. The former psychology student was working on aluminium assembly for a marina project when a moment's inattention took him off the factory floor and sat him behind an office desk.

The severed thumb was successfully reattached and today it works as well as it did before the accident.

Mair started working for his father Kerry Mair's company, Manson Marine, in his holidays in 1994 when it was building steel components for the Bayswater Marina, as well as turning out a range of anchors. With six months' university behind him and a student debt looming, the young Mair decided a change of direction was a good idea.

His dad had started the company in 1979. The owner of a Cavalier 39, he was certain he could make a better and cheaper anchor than the imported models that were the only ones then available. Mair snr was a sailor with an engineering background, making stainless steel components for production yachts.

His Manson plough was an immediate success. By 1988 it had 80 per cent of the local market and was making big inroads in Australia. The company continued to produce a range of anchors while moving into the area of marina construction that led to the big Bayswater contract in 1994.

That's when Mair jnr came aboard, and gave the rest of the company an immediate lesson in workplace safety. In 1995 the company moved to bigger new premises in Henderson, with Mair jnr taking over as manager in 1997 and his parents heading off to sail the Pacific aboard a Denis Ganley 50-footer (15.2m). They are still sailing.

The next year Steve bought the company and began making stainless steel anchors for export. Progress since then has been swift: Manson anchors are being used exclusively by the Riviera Group in Brisbane, one of Australia's biggest powerboat companies.

"Our anchor is now Australia's largest-selling big-boat anchor," Mair says. "Our success there has encouraged us to develop a new range of ray and kedge anchors and we are custom-building anchors for superyachts."

One project gives an indication of the company's growing reputation at the top end of the market. Ron Holland has invited Manson to tender for anchors for Mirabella V, the world's biggest sailing cutter, now being built at the Vosper Thorneycroft yard in Britain.

Designed by Holland, one of this country's top creators of superyachts, Mirabella V is 75.2m (246.7ft) long with a mast that soars 98m (321.5ft) above the deck. It will do better than 20 knots under sail.

Designed for the top end of the charter market, the owners want to be certain that when the yacht's anchors go down they hold fast, no matter what the conditions.

Mair has already supplied the technical details for a 700kg ray anchor and hopes to supply both bow and stern anchors.

"The secret of our success is being able to custom manufacture big stainless steel anchors in welded plate," he says. "And our business is not all superyachts. We also make all sorts of anchors for commercial shipping, some up to 1000kg. And everything must meet Lloyds or American Bureau of Shipping standard."

The engineering side of the business is also buoyant and Manson is now building new security gates for the America's Cup Viaduct Village.

Offshore, Manson is represented by Best Marine in Florida; Protector Europe (the company that markets the Rayglass Protector range among other New Zealand manufacturers' goods in that part of the world); North-West Distributors in Vancouver; AMI Sales in New South Wales and Marine Warehouse in Queensland.

The next big boat show for Manson Marine is Florida in October. Mair says his Manson Anchors website is also proving an excellent source of both local and international business leads.